Lady, Play Your Mandolin!

Foxy only made three cartoons---two of them--SMILE<DARN YA,SMILE and ONE MORE TIME are classics---everybody remembers the title songs. This is the Foxy nobody knows about. Frank Marsales specialized in bizarre closeups of animals,and have inanimate objects suddenly not only spring to life but join in the group singing. Opening scenes of a jolly gorilla waiter---and Marsales specialized in hippos with a Joe E. Brown yell.

Hey,they look like foxes to ME!!

I love this Foxy cartoon! It is short and it is VERY old (almost 88 years old to be exact.) But I still find it entertaining. Foxy is may favorite character. Foxy is the one that shows up about a little 2 minutes in wearing the sombrero and bull fighter cape. I wish Foxy had more cartoons than he does (Foxy stars in Lady Play Your Mandolin, Smile Darn Ya Smile, and One More Time in case you want to check out his other starring roles.) I did a little bit of digging and this cartoon is available on the Little Caesar DVD and on a DVD called Attack of the 30's Characters but unlike One More Time and Smile Darn Ya, Smile (which are both available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 6 DVD set) this cartoon was not restored, so the way you see it online in YouTube videos is pretty much the way it is on the DVD. But anyway, this cartoon is very fun to watch.

The first credited Merrie Melody is a poor effort. The animation is repetitive, the gags poor -- one involves a character's dentures coming out on an armature and acting like a castanet -- and the songs -- "Lady, Play Your Mandolin" and "I Am A Gay Caballero" are sung in annoying cartoon voices.

If it wasn't for the fact that the male and female leads had triangle ears and long bushy tails, they would've been mistaken for Mickey and Minnie Mouse (maybe Walt Disney did and threatened to sue so Leon Schlesinger told his cartoon directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising-former Disney animators-to stop making Foxy cartoons). Anyway, Foxy rides on his horse to a bar in a desert town to see his girlfriend play the title song. This being pre-Code (and no stigma of cartoons being only a children's medium then), there's lots of drinking of alcohol treated in a humorous manner especially of the horse at the climax. Historically important since this was the first Merrie Melodies short after a year of Looney Tunes with Bosko as the star. Highly amusing though a long way from the classics that starred Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, etc. Still, worth seeing for any animation buff especially of Warner Bros. cartoons.

The first Merrie Melody cartoon becomes funny once you realize the historical context. "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!" was released during prohibition, but features a bunch of characters drinking themselves stupid (those cartoons loved inebriation, didn't they?). Otherwise, you can see that the Termite Terrace crowd was only getting started, so you can forgive them for creating something that looks too much like a Disney cartoon; they got really good when they deliberately tried to be the anti-Disney. There's a reason that Foxy didn't get as well known as Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer, etc. But at least the existence of this cartoon paved the way for the Looney Tunes.